Seven

Contrary to popular belief, every victim of domestic violence is not a meek, mild, and passive being. People have this misconception of them because it appears that only a weak person would endure so much. Nobody ever realizes the true strength of these people. These people go through hell every waken moment of their lives - they live it. But they still, from some depth of their tortured souls, find the whatever it takes to go on another day - to keep trudging forward. That's not weak. A weak person would crawl in a hole and die. And some do die - at the hands of their abusers. When a victim leaves the situation, that is the most dangerous time in her relationship. Every day women are killed by their estranged husbands. I think it comes from the finality of it. The message of, "You can't do this to me anymore" after the abuser has been used to having his way for so long. They just snap - unable to cope with the loss of their proverbial punching bag. So, in a final act of control, they kill them. They kill them because they don't see the victims' lives as ever having been their own. A victim finding some assertion about herself is a threat to the abuser. It means he’s losing. Abusers can’t lose. No. They don’t know what the word means. So they kill their opponent in a final act to save face. Game over, bitch. I win.

Sometimes the victims get to the point where they think, “So what? Big deal, he kills me. I’m not living anyway.” This is a pivotal point in a victim’s life, existence rather, because we already said she’s not living. This is the point where she either finds her assertion and uses it fully to her advantage to rise above and beyond her own personal hell. Or, she dies in the physical sense, too, in a weird kind of self-prophesizing way. This is the point where she makes her move. Either way, she has closure.

But not all abusers kill. Not all of them possess such malice that they would actually take the life - or what’s left of it - of their victim. Some of them don’t work that way at all. What they do is keep their victim confused, on edge, and leery by acting erratically. It’s kind of like one of those invisible electric fences people put in their yards so that their dogs won’t roam away from home. The instability and the uncertainty of the abuser is what makes up the victim’s invisible fence. She’s so brainwashed into thinking he might snap at any minute, that she can’t see beyond that fence. So she becomes docile. She learns her boundaries. She doesn’t go too far because life on the other side of that invisible fence is unknown. Unfamiliar. Unimaginable. Unattainable.

When people hear the word “abuser”, it conjures up many images in their minds. An “abuser” can take many, many forms and they don’t always have to be the physical kind. When I first heard the word “abuser” and researched what domestic violence was, I was convinced that wasn’t me. I wasn’t a victim of this stuff because my “abuser” wasn’t physical. He didn’t hit me or beat me or leave marks on me or draw blood. I refused to be one of ‘those women’ for a very long time. Time has a way of marching on and you have no choice, but to march along with it and pick up things along the way. The more I studied the subject of domestic violence, the more I resembled ‘the victim’ and the more my husband resembled ‘the abuser’. Pretty soon, with the help of newly opened eyes, I could damn near answer “yes” to every question on those, “Are You a Victim?” tests.

This shocked the shit out of me. Me, this headstrong person that I had become over the years after enduring so much shit from people. Me? A victim of domestic violence? I realized I was a victim. So, what did I do with this newfound knowledge? Watched my “cycle of violence” spin out of control - that’s what I did.